The idea grew out of what Curtis Miller observed around him. A need for fresh, healthy food in Greenville.
So, Miller, who runs Maranatha Farms & Wellness, decided to start with one area — Pleasant Valley. The community bordered by South Pleasantburg, Augusta Road, and Interstate 85 is a food desert. That means, according to the USDA definition, that the residents there have limited access to affordable, nutritious food.
Miller, along with several partners, aims to change that with what he is calling the Greens & Things Farmer’s Market. The farmers market is set up to reflect the community and to focus on healthy foods. To this end, nearly all the participating farms and businesses are minority-owned, and most of the food offerings will be organic and plant-based.
The market will be a first for Pleasant Valley, and for Greenville, but not the last, Miller said. His goal is to create a model for a healthy farmers market that can be replicated and utilized in communities that lack access to healthy food.
“Success for me will be this market will be self-sustaining and my vendors are happy and that this economic and health model is sustained,” Miller said of his goals. “And that we make a positive impact on the health of the community.”
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Filling a need
Drive the area surrounding the Pleasant Valley Connection community center and you will find a Jack in the Box, a Pizza Hut, a Dollar General. An Aldi store is one of the few grocery stores, but as it sits across a major highway, it is only safely accessible by car.
Leda Young never would have imagined Pleasant Valley would lack grocery stores. Growing up in the neighborhood, Young said there were once many places for people to get fresh fruits and vegetables.
But over time, those stores have closed. An empty BI-LO store that closed over a year ago remains, a reminder of how the area has changed.
“So, what has happened is a lot of residents or those who don’t have transportation or who choose not to drive as far to the grocery store, end up buying those pickup type items from places like the Family Dollar or Dollar General,” said Young, who is executive director of Pleasant Valley Connection, a community organization that is collaborating on the market.
Those places provide food, yes, but not fresh fruits and vegetables, Young said.
If Greens & Things takes off, Miller hopes it will become a regular occurrence and become a model for community connectivity through food.
The effort is important given a growing need in Greenville. Food insecurity is growing, said Susan Frantz, partnership coordinator with LiveWell Greenville.
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Pre-pandemic, 52,000 people living in Greenville County were food insecure, said Frantz. Covid has exacerbated the need. Food insecurity is projected to increase to 12.6{c33c21346ff5e26ab8e0ae3d29ae4367143f0d27c235e34c392ea37decdb8bed} this year, according to data from Feeding America, pushing the number of people wondering where their next meal will come from to 62,860.
“Food insecurity is particularly detrimental to our children,” Frantz said. “Not having enough healthy food can have serious implications for a child’s physical and mental health, academic achievement, and future upward mobility.”
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LiveWell has been working on food security for years, but the agency this year has established a much more concerted and holistic effort designed to target areas of need in Greenville, Frantz said. The group has spent a huge part of the pandemic acting as a connector.
Frantz has a file she affectionately calls the “matchmaking spreadsheet,” which lists agencies, food pantries, organizations, community centers along with needs and services.
Greens & Things is one example of LiveWell matchmaking. Pleasant Valley Connection is partnering with Maranatha on the market, and The American Heart Association is also offering support through education and funding to ensure the market is affordable. Each adds an important piece — access, community engagement, funding.
Other efforts to address food insecurity spearheaded by LiveWell coalition partners include:
- Nutrition with Heart Program — a collaboration between Upstate Circle of Friends, Long Branch Baptist Church, the NAACP, and two African American owned restaurants, Fhinney Buffet and OJ’s Diner, which provides daily nutritious meals to African American seniors experiencing food insecurity using the restaurants to prepare the meals and local volunteers to deliver them.
- A partnership between the YMCA and several local churches and organizations to deliver food boxes to families experiencing homelessness living in hotels in Greenville County.
- Canasta Basica — a program run by the Hispanic Alliance that aims to support Hispanic families experiencing food insecurity by providing food baskets with culturally appropriate staples as well as gift cards to local Hispanic owned grocery stores.
Better food = better health
There is increasingly more information about the link between healthy food and health. Beth Motley has made it part of her life and professional mission to enlighten people to that connection. The family medicine doctor specializes in lifestyle medicine and devotes a good portion of her practice to education and utilizing lifestyle habits to prevent and improve chronic diseases.
“Access is a problem,” Motley said.
Lack of reliable transportation is a huge factor in the accessibility to healthy food, as is a lack of funds.
Greens & Things will accept SNAP benefits, and it will also implement the Healthy Bucks program, allowing anyone to double their SNAP benefit amount when using it at the market.
“The choices we make are subordinate to the choices we have,” Motley said. “And if we have more of that healthier food available, we’re more able to make healthy choices.”
Greens & Things is also addressing another potential roadblock to healthy food — comfort level. The market’s focus on highlighting and including a diverse group of vendors is unique, Frantz said.
It is also very intentional.
“We wanted to bring African American leaders, who are entrepreneurs, who can inspire as well,” said plant-based chef and activist Dawn Hilton-Williams, who is also a market participant and co-organizer. “This is a community-focused event.”
Hilton-Williams, who runs the catering company, Herban-Eats, has worked hard to normalize healthy, plant-based eating, pushing plant-based food as a defense against the chronic diseases that disproportionately impact African American communities.
Flavor is Hilton-William’s education tool of choice. Show people how to make healthy food that tastes good, she argues, and you can make real change. But you must show people.
For the first market, Hilton-Williams will be cooking and serving organic collard greens and vegan cornbread.
“I don’t like bland food,” she said with a chuckle.
Doing better
There is a palpable passion in Miller’s voice when he speaks of the community. For the 59-year-old, this market represents what he sees as his life mission to better the health and to offer good food to the community.
He started his Maranatha Farm on an eight-acre plot off Saluda Dam Road just three years ago. In that time, he’s provided a constant rotation of organic produce to people in the surrounding area.
“It’s a challenge for communities to access the food and to maintain their health,” Miller said. “The idea of a farmers market was what I thought would be the most impactful way I could change the dynamic in these communities.”
His hopes, he said, are that Greens & Things will grow. Perhaps, he imagined, it could eventually move to the space where the BI-LO once stood.
And he hopes it is a community connector. After all, Miller said, “what better way to bring communities together than food?”
The Greens & Things Farmers Market will take place 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 15 and Nov. 22 at Pleasant Valley Connection, 510 Old Augusta Road, Greenville
LiveWell Greenville is also partnering with Greenville Homeless Alliance and other partners to hold a series of collaborative forums on hunger and homelessness in the community the week of Nov. 16. The virtual events are from 11 a.m. – noon and are free and open to the public. For more, visit gvlhomes4all.org
Lillia Callum-Penso covers food for The Greenville News. She can be reached at [email protected] or at 864-478-5872, or on Facebook atfacebook.com/lillia.callumpenso.
